UK general election LIVE: Latest updates from the campaign trail

Our readers here have had their say on the Liberal Democrats plan to ‘save the NHS’ by pumping up £9 billion into the health service by targeting banks and the super-rich with new taxes.

Sir Ed Davey said he wanted to use the money, raised by reversing tax cuts to big banks and reforms to capital gains tax, to recruit 8,000 more GPs, boost cancer survival rates and introduce free personal care for the elderly and the disabled.

But our readers believe more money pumped into the NHS is not necessarily the way to save it with ‘root and branch’ reform urgently needed instead.

Here are just some of your comments:

It’s not about more and more tax to throw even greater amounts into the NHS bottomless pit. It needs wholesale reform and significant culture change. Billionaires and business will do what they did under Brown and leave. Who could blame them.

Greater funding for public service should be paid for by slashing welfare.

no no no.. no more money for the nhs to it fixes the waste, efficiency and effectiveness and transforms into a modern day service. they already get nearly 200bn a year, it is fundamentally bankrupting the UK combined with the benefits and pension bills

Pumping the NHS with trillions of pounds would be pointless. Until the holes in the very leaky bucket are fixed, it will continue to be a mess regardless of how much cash is ploughed in.

There is no point in “pumping” any more money into the NHS until it has a root and branch reform, the waste is shocking and no amount of money will ever be enough until there is a complete overhaul of the service.

The NHS is top heavy with highly paid executives and managers who are obsessed with diversity and equality issues. More money should be spent on front line medical staff.

The king of election stunts Sir Ed Davey is back with perhaps his most apt photo opprtunity yet to sum up a political campaign – a rollercoaster.

Sir Ed gave reporters a big thumbs-up as he boarded Rush, a ride which swings up 75 feet high at speeds of up to 50 miles an hour, at Thorpe Park.

This was followed by Colossus, the world’s first 10 loops rollercoaster which opened in 2002.

Asked why Sir Ed had chosen to visit Thorpe Park following the launch of his party’s manifesto, his representatives said “politics is a rollercoaster”.

The Lib Dem leader was flanked by Sarah Olney (left) and Munira Wilson (right), both Lib Dem MPs until Parliament dissolved last month.

More now on a line we brought you earlier from Nigel Farage’s speech in London.

Our political editor James Tapsfield reports Mr Farage risked inflaming the row over ‘dog whistle’ politics today as he accused Rishi Sunak of having ‘no connection with the country’.

The Reform leader faced a backlash yesterday after he laid into the PM’s decision to leave D-Day commemorations in France early.

A new poll produced by JL Partners has Labour 17 points ahead in the first survey of the week.

The poll has Labour on 41, the Conservatives on 24 and Reform up three points to 15.

Voting for Sir Ed Davey will help Sir Keir Starmer into Downing Street, the Conservatives have claimed.

Conservative Party chairman Richard Holden said:

A vote for the Liberal Democrats is a vote to put Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street.

Everyone would pay the price for that, taking families back to square one with £2,094 of higher taxes, a Retirement Tax on pensioners and a VAT raid on private schools driving higher class sizes in state schools across Britain.

Only Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have a clear plan and will deliver the bold action needed in this uncertain world to secure the future of Britain.

Our political correspondent Greg Heffer reports Sir Keir Starmer today insisted there will be ‘no tax surprises’ in Labour‘s general election manifesto as he attempted to ward off Tory attacks.

The Labour leader promised all of his party’s plans can be delivered without a rise in income tax, national insurance or VAT.

If you’re just joining us it has been another busy day on the campaign trail with Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer, Sir Ed Davey and Nigel Farage out and about for their political parties.

With plenty more coming up this afternoon including an interview with Mr Sunak on BBC Panorama, let’s recap the highlights from today so far:

• Rishi Sunak insisted he would carry on campaigning until the ‘last day’ as he dismissed rumours he could quit over his D-Day debacle
• Sir Keir Starmer slapped down one of his own frontbenchers who said Labour’s plans to charge VAT on top of private school fees could see larger class sizes in state schools
• Sir Ed Davey launches the Lib Dem manifesto in London where he declared a £9 billion plan to save the NHS was at the centre of his party’s election pledge to voters
• Nigel Farage has risked a sexism row after he suggested last week’s TV debate involving the Tories’ Penny Mordaunt and Labour’s Angela Rayner was a ‘catfight’
• Douglas Ross has announced he will stand down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives

Stick with us for more news and reaction to the biggest politics stories of the day.

Our political correspondent Greg Heffer reports Nigel Farage has risked a sexism row as he suggested last week’s TV debate involving the Tories‘ Penny Mordaunt and Labour’s Angela Rayner was a ‘catfight’.

The Reform UK leader was among seven senior politicians to take part in Friday night’s general election event on the BBC.

Mr Farage was asked to respond to comments made by former home secretary Suella Braverman, that ‘there’s not much difference really between him and many of the policies that we stand for’.

I had my cup of tea ready for the 5.30 news on the BBC this morning, I actually spat quite a lot of it down my dressing gown when I heard her saying that.”

Think about this, one in 30 people walking along the streets in this country, one in 30 of our population have come into Britain in the last two years. Is that the sort of policy she thinks that I support? The tax burden is the highest it’s been since 1948. How she can say that, I don’t know.

I’ve seen various other attacks on me over the course of the last couple of days coming from Conservative members of parliament, even people that I sided with during Brexit. I think they are slowly but surely waking up and smelling the coffee. They are realising that many of their longest term, as they would have seen it, most loyal supporters say enough is enough.

A Reform candidate remarked Britain should have ‘taken Hitler up on his offer of neutrality’ instead of fighting the Nazis and that women are the ‘sponging gender’ who should be ‘deprived of health care’.

The BBC uncovered comments by Ian Gribbin, the party’s candidate in Bexhill and Battle, who described Winston Churchill as ‘abysmal’. The comments were dated from 2022 and were posted on the Unherd magazine website.

A Reform spokesman said the comments were ‘written with an eye to inconvenient perspectives and truths’, while comments about women were ‘tongue in cheek’.

Mr Farage insisted ‘every party will suffer’ from candidate controversy due to the speed of the election.

Asked about comments made by Ian Gribbin, Mr Farage said:

They’ve got a bigger problem in the Green Party. They’ve had to suspend 20 of their candidates for putting out pretty vile antisemitic tweets.

Here’s something, I think every party will suffer because it was a snap election. We’ve put in place a good vetting programme, but we’ve run out of time.

‘All marriage plans are off’ when it comes to rejoining the Conservative Party, Nigel Farage has said.

Suella Braverman has suggested the Conservatives should welcome Mr Farage into the party as there was not much difference between the Tories and Reform.

Asked by the PA news agency about this, Mr Farage said:

Well, look, I mean, Suella Braverman said I should rejoin the Conservatives because our policies are very similar.

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. What they’ve done, allowing nearly two-and-a-half million people to settle in the country in the last two years is most certainly not our policy.

So I do like her, I do admire her, but I’m afraid at the moment all marriage plans are off.

Mr Farage said Conservative MPs would be offered the chance to defect to Reform if his party secured an ‘electoral beachhead’ on July 4.

Mr Farage was a Conservative Party member between 1978 and 1992.

Nigel Farage has declared the UK is ‘skint’ and its financial predicament is getting worse.

Speaking in London, the Reform leader said:

We need to face up to one or two realities. We are skint. And it is getting worse. And at some point in time we may even have trouble issuing gilts, issuing government bonds unless the market sees that we have got some solutions.

And that is why the only way out is growth and I think what Richard has just set out, in particular putting up the tax threshold to £20,000 would be a very, very big step in the right direction.

Mr Farage is speaking in London today to set out Reform’s economic policy but here’s a story we can bring you from earlier following his remarks on Sunday.

Chris Philp, the policing minister, said Mr Farage was ‘deeply unfair’ to claim Rishi Sunak is not patriotic and doesn’t understand ‘our culture’.

The Reform leader was accused of ‘dog whistle politics’ for his comments yesterday about the Prime Minister’s decision to leave early from D-Day commemorations in France.

Rear our report by Rory Tingle and Jason Groves here:

Reform leader Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, the party chairman, have set out their economic policy heading into the election with plans to get more people into work.

Mr Tice said he wants to raise the threshold for paying income tax to £20,000, up from £12,570, which he said would cost an estimated £40billion and benefit the ordinary person by £1,500 a year.

He added he wanted to increase the VAT threshold for small businesses to £150,000 from £90,000 in what he described as “great British tax cut”.

Mr Tice says the costs will be met by overhauling the Bank of England by stopping them from paying interest on reserves it holds.

He singled out soaring interest payments on £800 billion of debt held by the Bank following quantitative easing as an example that could be repurposed to help struggling families.

We can now bring you footage of the moment Rishi Sunak insisted he was ‘energised’ about the election campaign as he dismissed speculation he could quit.

The Prime Minister has faced intense pressure since he left early from an international commemoration of D-Day on Thursday.

We have brought you the main promises from the Lib Dems this election but Sir Ed Davey has outlined a number of plans if they were to win the election.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

• Liberal Democrats would support building 10 new garden cities as part of a plan to build 380,000 new homes a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year.
• Transform water companies into public benefit companies, banning bonuses for water bosses until discharges and leaks end in its plan to eliminate sewage from rivers
• On health, the Lib Dem manifesto promises everyone in England ‘the right to see a GP within seven days, or within 24 hours if they urgently need to, with 8,000 more GPs to deliver on it’.
• The have vowed to maintain the triple lock on the state pension in line with Labour and the Conservatives.
• Pledged to end first-past-the-post in favour of a proportional representation voting system.
• Unpaid carers will be given the right to paid carers’ leave from work and a statutory guarantee of regular respite breaks.
• Frequent fliers should face ‘taxation of international flights’, with the manifesto including a line on ‘introducing a new super tax on private jet flights, and removing the VAT exemptions for private, first-class and business-class flights’.
• For bus passengers, the party has promised to keep a £2 cap on fares while a review takes place.
• And for railway passengers, the party would review the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2 to see if it can still be delivered in a way that ‘provides value for money, including by encouraging private investment, or if an alternative is viable’.

Nigel Farage has claimed Rishi Sunak has ‘no connection with the country altogether’ as he doubled down on an attack directed at the Prime Minister.

Mr Farage made the remark as he launched Reform’s economic policy alongside Richard Tice.

We will bring you more as we get it.

A Conservative grandee and former cabinet minister has claimed it is ‘bonkers’ to suggest Nigel Farage understands more about what Britain wants than Rishi Sunak.

Sir David Davis, who is standing in his 11th general election, insisted the Reform leader was in no position to attack Mr Sunak’s background after he said the Prime Minister doesn’t understand ‘our culture’.

Speaking to The Sun, Sir David said:

He’s just plum wrong. The PM comes from a middle-class background, he went to a public school and became a very successful banker.

Nigel Farage went to a public school paid for by his parents and went on to become a city trader – where is he getting this idea that somehow he’s got more of a grip on what the country wants than the PM?

Our deputy political editor David Wilcock has the story on the Liberal Democrats manifesto launch with a planned £9.4 billion tax raid on banks and the super-rich to help fund  the NHS and social care in England.

Read David’s report here:

The Lib Dems have become the first political party to release its election manifesto with a promise to ‘save the NHS’ by pumping £9 billion into the health service.

Here’s what you need to know:

• This year’s Liberal Democrat manifesto is titled For A Fair Deal. It is 116 pages long and features 22 chapters, including one called Our Fair Deal and another named Political Reform.
• Sir Ed Davey says health and care are at the heart of the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto with a ‘bold, ambitious and fully-costed plan’ to tackle the health crisis from ‘top to bottom’.

He told an audience in London:

We can get people off waiting lists and into work, getting our economy growing strongly again too. We can save our NHS, we can fix the care crisis, we can give people a fair deal.

• Other policies include proposals to end sewage being dumped into rivers, free school meals across the country, home energy upgrades to cut bills and a guarantee that police will attend every burglary.
• He said the Lib Dems would push for a closer relationshipwith Europe, adding he wanted to see a ‘re-building the ties of trade and friendship’ to boost the economy and restore ‘Britain’s role on the world stage’.
• The Liberal Democrats leader also pledged to end first-past-the-post in favour of a proportional representation voting system.

Talk about a busy start to the week!

What an incredibly busy morning we’ve had on the campaign trail this morning as Rishi Sunak comes out fighting for his political survival.

Here’s everything you need to know with six key takeaways:

• Rishi Sunak has vowed to campaign until the last day of the election campaign and insists he never thought about quitting following intense criticism over his decision to leave the D-Day commemorations before an international event
• Mr Sunak also addressed an attack on him by Nigel Farage who said the Prime Minister doesn’t ‘understand our culture’ after his D-Day departure but said any response ‘wouldn’t be good for politics’.
• Keir Starmer has slapped down one of his own frontbench team after Emily Thornberry suggested class sizes could increase in state schools as a result of Labour’s plans to charge VAT to private schools.
• Mr Starmer also insisted there would be ‘no tax surprises’ in the party’s manifesto to be published on Thursday.
• Douglas Ross has announced he will stand down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives
• Sir Ed Davey will launch the Liberal Democrat’s election pledges today including a £9 billion promise to fix the NHS

We will continue to bring you the latest news as and when we get it.

Mr Starmer said it was a ‘tough choice’ to charge VAT on private school fees and he has ‘nothing against’ parents that choose to send their children to private schools.

Labour’s policy has been criticised as an attack on aspiration amid fears many parents will be forced to send their children to state schools as they cannot afford the increased fees.

Speaking at Nursery Hill Primary School in Nuneaton, Mr Starmer said:

Many parents will want to send their children to private schools and I’ve nothing against that whatsoever.

But we have to fix the problems we’ve got within our state schools, both the lack of essential teachers, we’ve got too many teachers missing in essential subjects like maths, and we need to provide childcare and nursery places.

And the question you and others always ask me is ‘if you’re going to do that, which is a good thing to do, how are you going to fund it?’

Given the economy is badly broken under this Government, we’ve made the choice, difficult choice, tough choice, that will get rid of the tax break on private schools and use it for those much needed teachers in our secondary schools and use it for the childcare and the nurseries that we’re rolling out today.

Sir Keir Starmer has said there will be ‘no tax surprises’ in the party’s manifesto as he reiterated that all of Labour’s pledges can be delivered with no rise in income tax, national insurance or VAT.

We’re going to launch our manifesto later this week, there will be no tax surprises in there, we’re not going to increase tax on working people.

And that means no increases in income tax and national insurance and VAT, and all of our plans are, as I say, fully costed, fully funded, and they don’t require tax rises over and above those that we’ve already set out.

So there won’t be any surprises when the manifesto is unveiled on Thursday.

Asked if he could match the Government’s expansion of childcare Sir Keir said:

We will deliver. I mean, our plan is actually better than the Government, the Government is right to say that they’ll have a plan, the problem they’ve got is they haven’t planned for it, and therefore, they haven’t got the spaces for it. What we will do with our plan is provide 100,000 spaces, 3,000-plus new nurseries.

This is a better plan. But of course, we want to complete on the Government’s plan, but actually do it in a way that’s planned and deliverable. Theirs is a good idea but not deliverable.

Well…while Rishi Sunak has come out fighting for his political future, Sir Keir Starmer has rejected a suggestion from his frontbench that Labour’s planned VAT add to private schools fees would lead to larger class sizes.

Asked if Ms Thornberry was wrong to say that adding VAT to private school fees would increase class sizes in the state sector, Sir Keir said: ‘Yes.’

We’ve had the analysis by the IFS on this, which says that there’ll be a negligible impact. So we’re very confident about that.

When asked if VAT on private schools is enough to fund Labour’s childcare policy as well as hiring 6,500 new teachers Sir Keir said:

This is a really important policy because as any parent with young children will tell you, childcare and nursery places are really essential.

Our scheme is fully funded, fully costed, but also fully planned so it would be wrapped around primary schools and just talking to some of the parents here who’ve got other children in the school, it will be a real game changer for them. So this has been very positively received.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said ‘of course not’ when asked if he considered quitting ahead of the election amid the D-Day fallout and insisted he is ‘energised’ and finding “enormous amount of support” for the policies he has put forward.

Our political editor James Tapsfield has the full story here as the Prime Minister comes out swinging at the start of the week as he aims to put his D-Day debacle behid him.

Rishi Sunak said ‘I don’t think it’s good for our politics’ if he commented on Nigel Farage’s suggestion that the Prime Minister does not understand “our culture”.

The Reform UK leader made the comment in his attack on Mr Sunak for leaving the D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations in Normandy early.

Asked what he made of Mr Farage’s remarks, the Prime Minister told reporters on a campaign visit to West Sussex:

You can ask him. I can’t speak for him and what he meant by those comments.

I’m not going to get involved in that because I don’t think it’s good for our politics, or indeed our country.

And when it comes to the D-Day events, I spoke about that a lot last week. I absolutely didn’t mean to cause anyone any hurt or upset, and that’s why I apologised unreservedly for the mistake that I made.

And I just hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me and look at my actions that I’ve taken as Prime Minister, both to support our armed forces with an increase in defence spending, but also have the minister focused on veterans affairs around the Cabinet table, making sure this is best country in the world to be a veteran.

Rishi Sunak said he is ‘not really interested in Reform’ and instead was focused on dividing lines with Labour as he was questioned about ex-home secretary Suella Braverman’s call to welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party.

Ms Braverman said there was not ‘much difference really’ between the Reform UK leader’s policies and the Tories’.

Speaking during a campaign visit to West Sussex, the Prime Minister told reporters:

Look, I’m not really interested in Reform, quite frankly. I’m interested in delivering for the British people with the agenda that I’m setting out.

The big difference here is between us and the Labour Party – that’s the choice at this election. Only Keir Starmer or I are going to be prime minister on July 5, so everyone should just think about that.

A vote for anyone who is not a Conservative candidate is just a vote to put Keir Starmer in power, and that’s the simple reality of it.

So people who are thinking of voting Reform, the question they should ask themselves is, ‘if you care about tackling migration and bringing it down, if you want a more proportionate approach to net zero, if you want your taxes cut, if you want your pension protected’, those are all things that I’m going to offer and the Conservatives will deliver. Keir Starmer doesn’t believe in any of those things.

Rishi Sunak has faced questions about rumours he might quit as Prime Minister before polling day.

‘People are gonna say what they’re gonna say,’ he told reporters on the campaign trail in West Sussex.

I am very confident in the actions that we’re putting forward for the British people.

I’m confident they will deliver a more secure future for people. There are lots of people who want to write me off, write this off, say this campaign or the election is a foregone conclusion.

They’ve been saying that, by the way, ever since I’ve got this job, right? Not since this election campaign.

The reality is I’m not going to stop going, I’m not going to stop fighting for people’s votes, I’m not going to stop fighting for the future of our country.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed he will not stop ‘fighting for the future of our country’ and will carry on ‘until the last day of this campaign’ as he sought to draw a line under the fallout over his early departure from D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Labour has pledged to free up childcare places by creating more than 3,000 new nurseries within primary schools in an estimated cost of £40,000 per classroom.

The party says the money will come from the new VAT tax on private schools.

Labour says space freed up in primary schools could unlock 3,334 new “high quality” nurseries set up in areas with the highest demand for places.

On Sunday, Emily Thornberry, the shadow attorney general, told GB News the policy could increase class sizes in the short term.

But Ms Phillipson said her colleague ‘wasn’t right’ and that there had been a ‘misunderstanding’ while on the morning broadcast round today.

Sure enough as soon as we get a picture of Mr Sunak, some emerge of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

Mr Starmer and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson are visiting a nursery in Nuneaton to unveil Labour’s plans for childcare if the party win the general election.

Labour has pledged to create 100,000 additional childcare places and more than 3,000 new nurseries as part of its plan.

Rishi Sunak is back on the campaign trail in West Sussex where he visited a cafe at a garden centre to talk to local residents.

The Prime Minister has endured a difficult few days after leaving the D-Day commemorations before an international event with world leaders.

Mr Sunak unveiled a new Conservative pledge to recruit an extra 8,000 police officers across England and Wales.

Here’s our story from The Daily Mail’s deputy political editor Harriet Line as the Conservatives last night pledged to recruit 8,000 extra police officers by increasing visa fees for foreign visitors and workers.

Rishi Sunak will vow to bring back neighbourhood policing while Labour said they would speed up prison building and tackle the court backlog in rape cases.

Read Harriet’s story here:

Mr Ross has issued a statement following his announcement he will stand down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives.

I have served as MP, MSP and leader for over three years now and believed I could continue to do so if re-elected to Westminster, but on reflection, that is not feasible.

I am committed to fighting and winning the Aberdeenshire North and Moray East constituency. Should I be given the honour to represent the people and communities of this new seat, they should know being their MP would receive my complete focus and attention.

I will therefore stand down as leader following the election on 4 July, once a successor is elected. Should I win the seat, I will also stand down as an MSP to make way for another Scottish Conservative representative in Holyrood.

My party has a chance to beat the SNP in key seats up and down Scotland, including in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East. We must now come together and fully focus on doing exactly that.

Mr Ross’s announcement comes days after he declared he would stand to be an MP to ‘beat the SNP’ after a sick colleague was blocked from seeking re-election.

The move coame despite Mr Ross previously having said he would step down from the Commons to focus on his role at Holyrood.

Read James Tapsfield’s report here:

Douglas Ross will stand down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after the general election, he has announced.

People may not feel safer on the streets because social media amplifies the impact of crime more than ever, Chris Philp has suggested.

Asked whether he believed people feel safer now than when the Conservatives came into government, the Home Office minister told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “

There is a perception, a feeling that you mentioned, and even though crime has demonstrably gone down according to the crime survey, sometimes people don’t feel so safe.

That is partly because of social media, so an incident, a knife crime incident, gets sort of magnified across social media in a way that wasn’t the case even five years ago, certainly 10 years ago.

There are particular places like London under Sadiq Khan where there is a… particular knife crime problem, but overall crime has gone down.

Mr Philp was speaking after the Prime Minister promised to recruit 8,000 more neighbourhood police officers in the Conservatives’ latest election pledge.

Chris Philp, the policing minister, has become the latest Conservative to publicly criticise Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Philp (pictured) said he was ‘shocked and disappointed’ when he heard the Prime Minister had departed early.

He said Mr Sunak had apologised and added he has a ‘good track record’ on veterans.

He was then asked about Mr Sunak apparently scaling back from interviews over the weekend but insisted the Prime Minister will be out campaigning today and talking to journalists whenever they want to ask him some questions’.

The Lib Dems are today pledging to pump £9 billion into the NHS.

Sir Ed Davey will talk up the policy at the party’s manifesto launch in North London with plans to recruit 8,000 more GPs, boost cancer survival rates and introduce free personal care for the elderly and the disabled.

Deputy leader Daisy Cooper said the money will be raised by reversing tax cuts given to big banks while extra money would also be generated by reforming capital gains tax – which is likely to affect the wealthiest.

Speaking to Sky News, Sir Ed Davey said:

This is the healthcare election for the Liberal Democrats.

We’ve been listening to people around the country, and top of their concerns in so many areas is the health service.

So we have absolutely made the NHS and care at the heart of our manifesto.

Here’s what we have coming up on the campaign trail today:

• Rishi Sunak is campaigning in Horsham where he will attend a neighbourhood watch meeting as the Conservatives unveil plans to recruit an extra 8,000 police officers
• Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson will visit a nursery in the West Midlands as the party unveils its plans for childcare.
• Sir Ed Davey launches Lib Dems manifesto with a speech in north London before heading to Thorpe Park this afternoon
• Nigel Farage and Richard Tice will launch Reform UK’s economic policy in Westminster.
• Scottish First Minister John Swinney will visit an after-school club in Glasgow on a youth football related announcement
• At 8pm, Rishi Sunak will be interviewed by Nick Robinson for a BBC Panorama General Election special

We will bring you the latest news as and when we get it.

Hello and welcome to another week on the general election campaign trail with just three-and-a-half weeks to go until the country heads to the polls on July 4.

This week, the main political parties will be launching their election manifestoes packed with promises to the public before they tick their ballots.

The Liberal Democrats will launch theirs today, the Conservatives tomorrow and Labour on Thursday.

Stick with us and we bring you the reaction plus all the big political stories of the day.